GE Industrial Solutions business today announced the opening of its $1.5 million, 17,000-square-foot New Product Introduction (NPI) Accelerator Lab located at the business's headquarters in Plainville, Connecticut. The lab enables engineers to focus their attention on developing technologies that customers are demanding and strengthens GE's ability to respond quicker to changing market conditions. The new lab will focus on the future of electrification with advanced technologies that protect and control the distribution of electricity throughout a facility's infrastructure. The efforts will include technology solutions for the delivery, management, conversion, and optimization of electrical power for customers across multiple energy-intensive industries.
In conjunction with the opening, GE also kicks off this year's completely renovated customer road tour, GE Odyssey: The Road to Renewal. A five-month traveling road show throughout the U.S. and Canada, GE's Odyssey truck highlights innovative product and service offerings from the Industrial Solutions business. The NPI Accelerator Lab features a team room, high-tech machine shop, product teardown area and pilot-run production area.
"The NPI Accelerator Lab co-locates our engineering, sourcing, product management and supply chain teams enabling improved communication and cross-functional engagement," said Paul Singer, senior executive of engineering for GE's Industrial Solutions business. "From rapid-prototyping capabilities to shorten product-cycle time, to our tear-down area for conducting product comparison analysis, this new facility with state-of-the-art equipment enables our team to quickly troubleshoot design challenges, apply manufacturing processes and gain invaluable hands-on experience."
This year's tour, GE Odyssey: The Road to Renewal is centered on discovering new ways to keep workplaces safe and reliable through retrofitting and upgrading aging industrial electrical infrastructures with innovative new technologies.
The Odyssey tour will bring the latest industrial products, services and aftermarket solutions to GE's customers in more than 80 cities across North America. Attendees can experience the advanced technologies that touch all parts of the electrical infrastructure - including GE EntelliGuard circuit breakers, Entellisys 5.0 low-voltage switchgear, arc flash mitigation products, life cycle service solutions, critical power products including uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems and more.
By bringing the Odyssey tour directly to customers' facilities, they are able to see, touch and experience GE's products and services firsthand. Working with these customers to identify their reliability, protection and efficiency issues, GE's Industrial Solutions business delivers and demonstrates end-to-end electrical infrastructure solutions to address these critical challenges customers are facing today.
